Bethesda, MD – July 28, 2011 -For over two years, LibLime has worked with Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization (WALDO), to build an ILS specifically for academic libraries. LibLime Academic Koha is the result. Designed, tested and used by academic librarians, LibLime Academic Koha offers the right platform for making an ILS be all that it can be. With LibLime and WALDO, academic librarians have the opportunity to work with like-minded professionals toward a shared goal of designing software that works for them.

Barcodeless Charges -- If you are using LibLime Academic Koha, your staff can charge out an item record that does not contain a barcode. This is extremely helpful when placing personal copies on Course Reserves, without placing adhesive materials on the personal copy. A staff member simply searches for the title – right from the circulation page – and selects the item of choice. A temporary record is then created and the item can be linked to a Course and circulated as per local policies.

Expanded Overrides -- If you are using LibLime Academic Koha, your circulation is governed by a series of overrides designed to allow for more student worker support, yet with strong staff supervision. Where warranted and appropriate, senior staff can make exceptions via override permissions. All these permissions and exceptions can be established using a set up utility in the administrative module. Based on how the local circulation policies are configured, there are various instances where staff can override at point of need.

About WALDO
Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization (WALDO) is a membership organization supporting the procurement & administration of electronic information services for libraries since 1982. Supporting over 900 member libraries, WALDO offers consortial discounts for over 5,000 products and services. For more information, please visit WALDO at www.waldolib.org or contact Rob Karen at rob@waldolib.org or (866) 579-6051 ext. 101. Other advantages of choosing a LibLime solution through WALDO include volume discounts, standard contracts, consolidated renewal and centralized billing. Participation in the LibLime discounts through WALDO is available to all WALDO members.

About LibLime, a division of PTFS
LibLime, a division of PTFS, is the global leader in professional Koha support. LibLime’s robust staff of programmers, data specialists, librarians, system administrators and project managers, provides first class consulting, implementation, data migration, training, development, and maintenance/hosting services for Koha in libraries of all types and sizes. PTFS is the developer of the world’s leading digital content management software, ArchivalWare, and also specializes in library staffing requirements, digitization, and systems integration. For more information, see liblime.com or ptfs.com or archivalware.net.

~Latest Content on Every U.S. Industry will be Searchable for EBSCO Discovery Service™ Users ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — July 28, 2011 — Industry reports from IBISWorld, the largest provider of industry information in the U.S., will be searchable via EBSCO Publishing’s (EBSCO) robust and comprehensive discovery service, EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS). The agreement between EBSCO and IBISWorld will allow metadata for industry research reports to be added to the Base Index of EDS.

IBISWorld’s Industry Research Reports are powerful business tools that provide strategic insight and analysis on over 700 U.S. industries. The addition of these industry reports will be a valuable resource for EDS users looking for the latest content on every U.S. industry. The reports are written by industry experts and can be used for understanding market size, competitors, drafting business plans, pitch books, benchmarking, forecasting, business valuations, litigation support, due diligence and many other research needs.

James Karklins, content partnerships manager for IBISWorld, says this partnership will make their valuable industry reports more accessible. “We are extremely pleased to announce the partnership with EBSCO Discovery Service. IBISWorld is a trusted resource for already over 100 U.S. academic institutions. We believe the partnership with EBSCO will make our reports more accessible to academic libraries and help free staff time for valuable research.”

IBISWorld joins a growing list of publishers and other content partners that are taking part in EDS to bring more visibility to their content. Partners include the world’s largest scholarly journal & book publishers including Elsevier, Wiley Blackwell, Springer Science & Business Media, Taylor & Francis Informa, Sage Publications, and thousands of others. Partners also include content providers, such as LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters (Web of Science), JSTOR, ARTstor, Credo Reference, Oxford University Press, World Book, ABC-CLIO, and many others.

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage. The EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers (and growing) in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers, representing far more content providers and publishers than any other discovery service.

EBSCO Discovery Service is quickly becoming the discovery selection for many libraries (www.ebscohost.com/discovery/eds-news), and an obvious partner for content providers. Because the service builds on the foundation provided by the EBSCOhost® platform, libraries gain a full user experience for discovering their collections/OPAC—which is not typical in the discovery space. Further still, in the many universities and other libraries where EBSCOhost is the most-used platform for premium research, users are not asked to change their pathways or habits for searching. There’s simply more to discover on the familiar EBSCOhost platform, and the same can be said for library administrators who can leverage their previous work with EBSCOadmin®.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the producer of EBSCOhost®, the world’s premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives, and eBooks. The company provides more than 300 databases and nearly 300,000 eBooks. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Director of Public Relations
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that CAUSE (Comfort for America's Uniformed Services) is now live on their installation of the official Koha integrated library system.

Cause organizes programs that promote recreation, relaxation and resiliency for members of the US Armed Services recuperating from injuries received in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization's Digital Entertainment Library provides access to media such as DVDs and video games.

The Library's Koha installation went live on July 15th, and they have contracted with ByWater Solutions for ongoing support and hosting services.

"Since we are not your typical library and have no librarians or full time staff we were looking for an easy to use, flexible, reliable, and cost-effective solution to manage our seven (and growing) branches. Koha was immediately an attractive solution and ByWater’s hosting and support options made it even more attractive."

They continue: "Working with Ruth (ByWater's Lead Migration Specialist) often at late hours and weekends we were able to quickly migrate our existing data of over 6,000 biblios, 15,000 holdings, 11,000 patrons, and 230,000 historical transactions to a test system. After some minor modifications recommended by Ruth to improve performance we quickly turned the switch to Go Live. Our volunteer staff has expressed nothing but praise with “their” new system. We look forward to continue to grow with ByWater in supporting our military wounded."

About the CAUSE Digital Entertainment Library:
C-DEL provides free and easy access to DVDs, video games and gaming systems. Often the only source of free entertainment on military posts, the library is one of the most popular Cause programs. Since the first C-DEL branch opened at Walter Reed in 2005, almost 200,000 lending transactions have been recorded. In addition to being popular entertainment, video games also have therapeutic value. Recent studies have shown that playing video games can activate the parasympathetic nervous system and reduce heightened tension related to stress. There is even research showing that playing Tetris, a puzzle video game, may reduce PTSD flashbacks. C-DEL's greatest value, however, lies in the interaction that occurs between wounded warriors and members of the community.

About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org
About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com

In August, 2011 students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science will be using LibLime Academic Koha as part of their coursework. Students in Professor Bobby Bothmann’s “Cataloging and Classification I” course will have the ability to learn cataloging and classification firsthand by creating records in their own ILS.
LibLime will provide the class and Professor Bothmann with a hosted installation of LibLime Academic Koha, free of charge. This will allow the students unlimited access and all privileges associated with the staff end of the ILS as well as all OPAC functionality for the duration of the course. They can create, edit, and delete MARC records, review them in the OPAC, and see how the ILS indexes work for retrieval.

“Having taught cataloging and classification for a few years”, said Professor Bothmann, “I have found one of the stumbling blocks is how to effectively teach the importance of what MARC 21 coding does for the patron, so I'm very excited to have students create records in a real environment, observe how MARC tags and indicators effect the OPAC display, and to see how indexing works.”

LibLime's Koha with Class program is designed to give library school faculty a chance to embed the use of an ILS into their coursework and curricula. Students gain practical experience with library automation software as they prepare to enter the library workforce. LibLime provides free support for these Koha with Class installations, and already there are dozens of faculty members throughout North America taking advantage of this program. LibLime is looking to expand the program overseas to support librarianship at an international level.

IPSWICH, Mass. — July 26, 2011 — Okanagan College in British Columbia, Canada has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing as its discovery service. After looking at other services, librarians selected EDS for its simple search process, rich metadata and subject headings. EBSCO Discovery Service was also chosen to attract users to the library’s resources and increase the use of those resources while also highlighting the value the library offers through the customization options EDS offers.

After conducting a usability study in 2009, the librarians at Okanagan saw the need for Web-scale discovery and had been looking to provide improved access to their growing array of online and physical resources. The Director of Library Services at Okanagan College, Ross Tyner, says EBSCO Discovery Service will offer students the ability to independently search across multiple databases and resource types simultaneously. “Rather than losing our users to Google, the library required a single place for users to begin their research that was easy to use and which returned reliable, relevant results.”

Okanagan evaluated a number of other discovery services during the decision process. Tyner says the feedback collected during these evaluations also helped librarians make their selection. “EDS allows for more customization than some of the other products on the market. The ability to easily and quickly create features such as custom subject profiles was a clear advantage.”

EBSCO Discovery Service provides users with many options for an enhanced search experience. Result list limiters and facets help to consolidate user refinement actions and provide options for basic and advanced users alike. According to Tyner, these limiters will be a big benefit to users. “A simple search process was essential, but we also wanted to provide users with numerous search limiters. EDS provides many options for limiting search results, giving users control over their search and their results.”

EBSCO Discovery Service offers libraries a variety of customization options. Okanagan College has integrated a chat box, customized the toolbar and the EDS footer and changed the color scheme. Additionally, librarians plan to incorporate custom links and widgets to ensure users can get help when they need it.

Tyner says Okanagan’s experience with EBSCO also played an important role in the school’s decision to implement EDS. “We have a long history of working with EBSCO. Our EBSCO representatives have supported us through database transitions, licensing agreements and the process of implementing this discovery service. We have built a strong relationship with the company, and with its employees, over the years we have been working together.”

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box-searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

The Base Index for EBSCO Discovery Service forms the foundation upon which each EDS subscribing library builds out its custom collection. Beginning with the Base Index, each institution extends the reach of EDS by adding appropriate resources including its catalog, institutional repositories, EBSCOhost and other databases, and additional content sources to which it subscribes. It is this combination that allows a single, comprehensive, custom solution for discovering the value of any library’s collection.

The EDS Base Index is comprised of metadata from the world’s foremost information providers. At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for nearly 50,000 magazines & journals, approximately 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 100 million newspaper articles, more than 400,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the producer of EBSCOhost®, the world’s premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives, and e-books. The company provides more than 300 databases and nearly 300,000 e-books. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.